Recognition at last for Gentleman Jack, Britains first modern lesbian

Anne Lister has been honoured in the church where she wed, and her tales of passionate affairs are now the subject of a TV drama

She was a 19th-century pioneer in many fields: business, travel, mountaineering. But 178 years after her death, Anne Lister is best known for her string of female lovers, with their erotic encounters explicitly chronicled in a coded diary stretching to 27 volumes.

Last week, the woman often referred to as the first modern lesbian was honoured with a blue plaque at Holy Trinity church in Goodramgate, York. The medieval church had sealed Listers de facto marriage to a woman when the couple took communion at its altar.

The plaque, which celebrates a gender-nonconforming entrepreneur, is the first in the UK to be bordered with rainbow colours in recognition of lesbian, gay and trangender history.

Next year the BBC will screen an eight-part TV drama about Listers life and loves, written and directed by Sally Wainwright, whose credits include Happy Valley and Last Tango in Halifax. The series, Gentleman Jack – Listers nickname, a result of her penchant for dark, masculine clothing – is being filmed in Yorkshire with a cast led by Suranne Jones and including Sophie Rundle and Timothy West.

Bringing Anne Lister to life with all her complexity, passion, brilliance and wit is an epic challenge, Wainwright told the Radio Times last year when the series was announced.

On Easter Sunday, Lister and Walker who had exchanged vows and rings took communion together at Holy Trinity. In Listers eyes, said Whitbread, the sacramental act sealed the matrimonial pact in which they had entered. The church has now become an icon for what is interpreted as the site of the first lesbian marriage to be held in Britain.

Five years later, the two women set off on a European tour. In Georgia, Lister developed a fever after being bitten by an insect and died at 49 in September 1840. Walker had her body embalmed and returned to Yorkshire.

Her diaries remained hidden for almost 50 years, until a descendant, John Lister, who had inherited Shibden Hall, found them and broke the code derived from algebra and the Greek alphabet. The sexually explosive content so alarmed Lister who was clandestinely gay that he returned the diaries to their hiding place.